Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Patrick Goggles has spent four years in the Wyoming Legislature as the representative from House District 33. His district takes in most of the Wind River Reservation from Crowheart on the west to almost Red Canyon on the east side of Lander. It includes the town of Hudson but not Lander, which Goggles calls "the hole in the doughnut." Just an indication of the strange shapes of Wyoming's districting (and gerrymandering by the Republicans).

I talked to Patrick, a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe, on the floor of the Pepsi Center. He lives in rural Mill Creek but his home precinct is in Ethete.

He said he's been interviewed by Wyoming Public Radio, a radio station in South Dakota, RezNet News out of the University of Montana, and several others. After we talked he was off to be interviewed by the BBC.

This is his first convention, but he remembers watching politics as far back as 1960 and the Kennedy-Nixon debates. He has relatives all over Wyoming, and four of his nephews recently finished Marine boot camp and will be headed to Iraq after further training. His son-in-law has served two tours in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army and one in Iraq.

Goggles is an Obama supporter and nominated Sen. Obama at the Fremont County convention back in March. That upset his brother, a Clinton supporter, but Patrick says that he's getting over it.

He stresses the "unity" theme that's at the heart of this convention. "The end result is a unified front behind one candidate and that's Barack Obama."